I have survived my first week of school for the year, and actually, things are going quite well. I like my classes. I love the new way that I’m running things (more posts on that later). It seems like it will be a good year.
I changed my Do Nows a tiny bit this year (warm-up, bell ringer, or whatever you call it). On Thursdays, our concept is Terminology Thursday. I pick one literature term that all the kids should know, and I teach or review it with awesome examples. This week our lit term was THEME. Now, I’ve always struggled with teaching theme. Kids get it confused with main idea and just randomly picking something that happened in the novel. BUT this year, I finally got it right. Out of curiosity, I googled “teaching theme.” This video popped up, and my way of teaching theme will ALWAYS be this from now on.
I used her example of Finding Nemo with my kids, and they loved it. We had an awesome time talking about theme, which has NEVER happened before for me. The kids understood it, enjoyed it, and really were paying attention. I especially love the way that it goes from a topic to a theme. So how do you teach theme?
None of those things happened. INSTEAD: I ended up reading adolescent novels that I can finish in one day and have music playing in the background while I read. I ended up watching every single episode of Dexter on Netflix. I ended up sleeping until ten on most days, and then playing a game that I like to call “Eat Everything in Sight Because You’re Home Alone All Day and Bored.” So I have enjoyed this mantra to your left all summer long.
One thing that I did accomplish was painting the old, disgusting podium that was sitting in my classroom. I inherited this podium with my room, and I think every teacher that has used it has painted it a different color. Without taking the previous layers of paint off, mind you. Needless to say, it was really bumpy from all fifty layers of paint and quite wonky. I brought this bad boy home and gave him a much-needed makeover. Unfortunately, I don’t have a before picture to go with the after picture, but trust me, it’s a major improvement.
First, I had to take all the old paint off. When I say that there were fifty layers of paint, I wasn’t kidding. Okay, so there was only like five layers, but that is still a lot. The bottom layer had student names all over it. (I wonder if there was really a student who liked to be called Pumba, but I’ll never know.) Then after the paint stripper had burned my eyes out of the sockets, I sanded it down. My dad then added a new strip of wood to the lip of the top because it was falling off and badly broken. He also secured the bottom so that it wasn’t so wobbly. I gave it two coats of black paint. Then a couple days later, I did my multi-colored polka dots.
Why am I telling you all this, you might ask… Well, this summer I read THE Classroom Management Book written by the Wongs. It was an amazing read, and I very highly recommend it for all teachers. It had many techniques and procedures for everything from preschool to high school students. While reading this, I learned that supposedly by posting your classroom procedures and teaching them to your students within the first few weeks of school, you can drastically change the environment of your classroom. Now, I am definitely skeptical after the rough class that I had last year, where I doubt simply posting the rules could have helped these kids to focus and learn. However, this year I will be giving it a chance.
There is always room for growth, and for me, there is room for LOTS of it. I look back on last year and that tough class, and I am sad. I’m sad for the four boys who were uncomfortable in my room without structure. I’m sad for the other students who were angels that had to suffer through all the inappropriate jokes, screaming, and cussing. I will not let this power struggle happen again. I have put a few procedures in place specifically to try and remedy these types of situations. I’ll let you know what happens this year and if I think that having procedures posted makes a difference.
The best part for me is that my mom is also my best friend. My poor father has to listen to our LONGGGGGG phone conversations and stuff. He has recently told me that he just takes his hearing aid out, haha. Either way, I’m so blessed to have such wonderful people in my life to help me through all my problems.
This might be my favorite purchase that was also from Walmart’s clearance section. Last year when my class held discussions, my kids had such a horrible problem with talking over one another. I had been wracking my brain with how to fix this. I found my solution in this furry monster ball. I have named him Mr. Schneebly (after my favorite movie, School of Rock). This is really a ball that bounces, but it is soft (which is important because I know that it WILL hit someone in the head). For $5, I thought it was a pretty good deal. The brand on the back says Fuzzbies.
Another issue that I had last year was with my hall pass. Our school uses clipboards as hall passes, and OMG, they are disgusting. Kids take them to the bathroom and put them on the floor while they pee or whatever. YUCK! So when I was at the Dollar Tree the other day, I found these hall passes. I bought one for the bathroom, nurse, office, and just for the hall, in general (because we know that kids always need to run random, useless errands to other teachers). I plan on buying some cheap lanyards to put these passes on, so that they can hang around their neck and not be thrown on the floor like the clipboards.
While at Walmart, I also found some packs of little tissues that have funny sayings on them. I thought these would be good gifts for my teacher friends on the first day back to school. They were pretty hilarious to me. It makes me want to keep them, but that kind of defeats the purpose… They say things like “The dog ate my lesson plan.”
Too Young, Too Bright, Just Write 